Stephanie Meyer has a reputation for execrable writing. I’m sure you know who I mean. People criticise her prose readily. Yet, several of her books have major movies made from them. And the books sell well. Really well.

So they can’t be that bad, can they?

That’s why I set out to discover for myself.

Contrary to my expectations, the actual writing flows well. It doesn’t trip up the reader. There are no horribly complex passages. It is an easy read and it has very good pace. That said, it’s not terribly intellectual, either. You would be unlikely to learn new words from Meyer’s writing. It is very ordinary, unpretentious writing. This may well be an important contributing factor to Twilight’s popularity.

However, now I’m a few chapters in I almost want to smack Bella upside-the-head. But, then, she is, like, 16 or something. I actually know girls that age and they are not hugely different from Bella. It just seems worse because it’s in a book. And it’s in first-person perspective. So everything is filtered through her world-view.

Maybe the later books (which I’m currently not intending to read) have worse writing.